


the marrow of your bones

by mysterymistakes



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Aftercare, Anal Sex, Angst, Breathplay, Choking, Dubious Consent, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentioned Noncon, Mild Gore, Minor Blood Kink, Minor Dacryphilia, Minor spit kink, Overstimulation, Praise Kink, Rough Sex, Unstable Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:54:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25522447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterymistakes/pseuds/mysterymistakes
Summary: “Long time, no see.” Sylvain starts. It’s meant to be jovial, a thrown greeting between friends, but it falls flat at Dimitri’s feet. Sylvain feels acutely alone, but forges onward. “I thought I’d find you here.” He moves closer again, just a half-step, and the edges of Dimitri’s lips turn downwards. “We’ve been warned off of seeing you, but you know me. I had to get a look for myself.” He’s trying to keep himself light, friendly, but Dimitri’s nowhere near taking the bait, and it sets something sour in the pit of his stomach.Five years is a long time to be dead.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 7
Kudos: 128





	the marrow of your bones

**Author's Note:**

> hi! please please heed the tags. thanks!

The night they return to the monastery, it storms.

The sky opens with a vengeance. Rain smashes against the crumbling stone, scraping away at the mortar like it’s trying to scramble up and into the stagnant, abandoned rooms. Winds shriek their way through cracked windows and broken doors, over rotted rugs and chair legs until hoarse. Lightning strikes. Thunder shakes the foundations of each building. Dusty tomes fall to the floors and open for the first time in years.

Sylvain’s feet carry him to the cathedral.

He had mourned Dimitri’s loss. It left him raw, empty; Cornelia had crowned a spike with Dimitri’s head, displaying it like a carnival prize in the very center of the royal courtyard. He, Felix, and Ingrid had held a small vigil for him under the guise of night, looking to the fire in the hopes it would burn away the image of golden-blonde hair falling from a rotted scalp. They snuck through the palace to find the secret hallway stuffed full of Blaiddyd family treasures, much the way they’d followed Dimitri’s leaden-footed lead to it many years before. They’d saved what they could of his; a favorite book, a gifted dagger, a familial betrothal chain he used to wear as a makeshift crown. There was a kind of soured irony, Sylvain thought, looping the delicate gold around his neck for safekeeping, that of the three _he_ was the one who wound up with the chain. Ingrid kept the book; Felix took the dagger. They burned an ewe on the pyre in Dimitri’s place, and as far as Sylvain was concerned, he too went up in smoke. He returned to the cold north of Gautier a dead man. The earth there had reeked of petrichor. 

Five years, it turns out, is quite a while to be dead. It took its toll; Sylvain’s empty husk was manipulated by the Margrave Gautier and some of the crueler lords from the Kingdom resistance into doing their bidding. He was made to lead needless conquests into Srengi territories he once dreamed of peace with, made to warm the beds of particular Imperial contacts to keep them at bay. He did as he was told, blindly and without thinking, because it would have been far more painful to open his eyes. If he did, he would have had to have seen Ingrid and Rodrigue looking upon him with pity, seen the empty chair at their roundtable that was supposed to be filled by the abscondant Felix. The chain sat in his room, gathering dust in a corner out of mind. 

To learn that Dimitri was alive, truly, breathing and bloodied and _real,_ with the head of a vile merchant hanging from his clawed gauntlets, thrust Sylvain into purgatory. It had been foolish, he supposed, to think that something so trivial as death could’ve impeded Dimitri’s fervor. Of course, it would’ve been easier if it had, and if the skull in his memory hadn’t been a hoax, but nothing in Sylvain’s life has ever been easy. The first thing he did upon returning to his room was smash the bedside mirror. 

The cathedral is far lonelier than it had been in Sylvain’s memory. The pews and their kneelers are in shambles, overturned and cast aside if not ruined entirely. There is a heavy layer of dust and decay settled over every surface; what was once shining marble or burnished gold has become dull and grayed, and the air is thick, damp and still despite the storm outside. 

They’d all been warned off of going to him. _He’s single-minded. He tries to kill anything that he sees as blocking his path._ Sylvain had been told, while being led up to his old room at the end of the hall. _I can’t tell you not to go, but I can’t guarantee your safety._ Sylvain had nodded, made a noise of assent, but he couldn’t stop his feet from carrying him north, across the bridge in the howling rain and through the gates where they’d rusted open. 

There’s a million miles stretched between him and Dimitri, who stands in front of the ruined pulpit, what feels like a lifetime to be walked as Sylvain makes his way down the aisle. The click of his boot heels cuts clean through the stillness, even as the air settles in his lungs like a film. He stops a few paces behind Dimitri, who is occupying a puddle of moonlight. Curiously, he’s out of his armor and simply in the undergarments. The edge of his brilliant blue cloak is stained an ugly brownish with dirt and decay, how much of which is Dimitri’s and how much isn’t, Sylvain’s not keen on knowing. He’s bigger than Sylvain remembers; broader, taller, and though he can only see the edge of Dimitri’s profile, underneath the grime is the face of someone who has grown up well. His boyish charm has been replaced by a sharp, roguish handsomeness, but what stands out the most is the thick, silver collar and chain hanging heavy around his neck. Whispers fill the air around him, fluttering to and fro, weaving around him a cocoon of sorrow that Sylvain can just barely catch a single thread of. They’re pleas. He’s bargaining with the dead, begging Lambert and Glenn and even Dedue, promising bloody gifts to appease them and it’s painfully obvious that he’s exhausted, sick of being tortured constantly by those he cared for most and blamed for things he just can’t see as not his fault. And yet, it’s Dimitri, truly and unmistakably so. He falls silent when Sylvain takes a step farther forward. 

“Long time, no see.” Sylvain starts. It’s meant to be jovial, a thrown greeting between friends, but it falls flat at Dimitri’s feet. Sylvain feels acutely alone, but forges onward. “I thought I’d find you here.” He moves closer again, just a half-step, and the edges of Dimitri’s lips turn downwards. “We’ve been warned off of seeing you, but you know me. I had to get a look for myself.” He’s trying to keep himself light, friendly, but Dimitri’s nowhere near taking the bait and it sets something sour in the pit of his stomach. 

“Leave.” Dimitri says. His voice is deeper nowadays, grinding and disdainful. There isn’t supposed to be any room in that command, and there’s a part of Sylvain that wants to obey, wants to leave Dimitri to his ghosts and go back to the safety of his musty little room because that’s what he’s been trained to do, what he’s spent years doing. A greater part of Sylvain, one that has been lurking beneath the surface, wants closure, catharsis. He stays put. 

“Aw,” he says instead, inching ever closer and keeping his weight on the balls of his feet, “I thought you’d be happy to see me! After all, it’s been so long.” Dimitri says nothing, turns a boot out towards him and bares his teeth. The sour thing in Sylvain’s stomach grows, pushes past his diaphragm and spills into his lungs. It mixes with stale air to become poison. 

“Leave, or I will force you to.” Dimitri says, turning just enough farther towards Sylvain so that he can see the angry, red scar that seeps out from underneath his eyepatch, the haggard bruise underneath his good eye, as vacant as it is blue. Shadows fall underneath the sharp cuts of his jaw, his cheekbones, to make him look the part of the corpse Sylvain had thought him to be. Sylvain knows he’s not in his right mind, that he hasn’t been for years, but to stand here before Dimitri, or at least the one wearing his skin, and to be cast aside with such flippancy, such insouciant ire, makes his blood boil. His limbs are abuzz, palms sweating, bile rising in his throat. In a moment of weakness, he lashes out. Dimitri’s feet are swept out from beneath him. He lands heavy, flat on his back, and Sylvain’s foot comes crashing down on his chest, yanking the chain so his head is pulled off the ground. He leans down to sneer, close enough to Dimitri to see the fine grit freshly dusted in his golden hair. 

The chain around Dimitri’s neck has just enough space to allow his skin to breathe; a preventative measure, no doubt, meant for long-term prisoners, to avoid unnecessary infection. Meticulously carved into each individual link is a silencing rune, and the metal is soundless, liquid-smooth when he moves. The thick collar of it, once a shining silver, is charred black. This close, with Dimitri’s hot, angered breath landing like a brand on his chest, Sylvain can see that there were once other runes, dark magic, like he’d found traces of in Hubert’s old quarters, that had been forcibly lifted. Vocal holds and strength binds, a painful inverted crest. Someone must’ve destroyed them for him.

“They really tried to keep you down, huh.” Sylvain drawls, shifting his weight to crush the flat of his boot further onto Dimitri’s sternum, to feel him bristle beneath it. “They should’ve known better. I don’t think even the Goddess herself could get in your way, not that they care much about her.” Dimitri snarls, lurches up with that inhuman strength of his to throw Sylvain to the ground, but he’s out of practice, thinning and weakened from years on scraps, for hatred feeds the body not. Sylvain, quick and light, steps off of him and out of the way, yanks on the chain around Dimitri’s neck to send him tumbling to his knees on the cold flagstone. Sylvain’s boot comes down hard on Dimitri’s cock, and he grits his teeth together with such force Sylvain’s convinced he’s going to break his jaw. He’s hard, painfully so, and a spike of lust carves its way through Sylvain to pull the chain taught, stranding Dimitri between two poles, and Sylvain’s a little sad that there’s no satisfying jingle when he does. The burning, acid hate of Dimitri’s stare slides right off of him.

“You could kill me right now, you know.” Sylvain muses, pulling the chain just a tad bit harder to watch the cold metal bite into Dimitri’s neck, the yet-silver lip of it pressing into his veins, which beat at the frantic tattoo of a thing trapped. “Your hands aren’t bound. I’m faster than you, but there isn’t a soul alive that could escape that crushing grip you’ve got. Why not, Dimitri? Why not kill me where I stand?” The cock underneath his boot twitches. The thought of it sends a slow burn rolling through Sylvain’s gut, spurs him on. “Is it the guilt? The fact that you know I came back for you, even after you died, when you never came back for me?” Dimitri’s lips curl, and Sylvain can feel the growl through the chain, but it holds no threat. At least for now, he has the beast leashed, heeling for him. It makes his blood sing. “Or, maybe, because you know that we’ve been fighting this war on your behalf? Me, Ingrid, Felix, we all stayed because we had a responsibility to our people- to _your people!_ We needed a leader, Dimitri! And where were you, off playing the noble vigilante?” Sylvain hisses. Dimitri looks more and more like a cornered animal by the second, his teeth bared and hackles raised, but still he does not move, and Sylvain would bet that he’s beginning to leak. Sylvain knows he shouldn’t be doing this, that it’s a fruitless endeavor to scream at someone so far gone, but for the first time in years, he’s got the reigns _._ It fills his lungs with fire, sets his nerves alight. Blinding red seeps into the corners of his vision to obscure the twisted and perfect picture at his feet. 

“Did you think you were doing us a _favor_ by disappearing? You had homes to come back to! You could’ve come back to any one of our territories, but no, was it that in your narrow mind, that this is your fight and yours alone? Because none of us could’ve possibly _cared_ so much about you that we’d consider it our fight as well? Is that it?” The look in Dimitri’s eye doesn’t change. He’s caged, feral; one-eyed and snarling, a demonic image that has filled the last moments of countless lives. Sylvain’s not much better, breathing ragged and eyes crazed, unkempt hair falling around his face in a bloody halo. His fingernails dig into his palm as he tightens his grip on Dimitri’s chain. “Is that it, Dimitri? Is that why you abandoned us?” Sylvain roars, free hand flying to take a bruising grip on Dimitri’s jaw, thumb landing inside his mouth, in the soft underneath his tongue. He grabs, pulls. The tips of his fingers heat up, not enough to damage, but enough to sting. “I loved you, you know.” Sylvain whispers, more for himself than Dimitri. “I loved you. I wished, for so long, I wished it was me that ended up with his head on a pike instead.” It doesn’t feel good to say, to admit, like he’s pushing nettles out between his teeth, but Dimitri’s iced-over stare thaws almost imperceptibly. His eye widens, not even enough to be called a fraction, and Sylvain knows that against all odds he’s gotten through, that he should stop here, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t, because Dimitri is hard underneath his boot, still beautiful even after five years of misery, and in a way that makes Sylvain’s stomach turn, makes molten lust mix with the catharsis high and course through his veins, dangerous and emboldening. Sylvain sneers. “Well? Anything to say for yourself? You’ve got a tongue. Speak.” He pulls his thumb from Dimitri’s mouth, grip still locked. Spit and blood wipe across his cheek. 

“You are not the object of my anger.” Dimitri bites out. His voice is still horrible, shredded, like he’d screamed until hoarse for years. “Leave, before you become it.” He growls, brimming with vitriol, and of course, damn him, of course Sylvain’s traitorous body goes weak at so direct a command from Dimitri, but his embittered anger, the far-off possibility of deliverance keeps him rooted to the spot. It keeps the chain around his knuckles and his fingers on Dimitri’s jaw. Why would Dimitri, after so long alone with his demons, suddenly turn around to become the leader they so desperately need, the idol Sylvain once worshipped at the altar of? To see him like this, to have _this,_ whatever horrible, unnamed thing _this_ is be their reunion, forces Sylvain to look at the two of them, truly, for the first time. Dimitri had been bargaining with things Sylvain could never hope to understand when he walked through the doors of the cathedral, and of course, of _course_ , because such is his luck, Sylvain has a chilling moment of clarity right then and there, with Dimitri trapped and chained like a feral dog waiting for the other shoe to drop, to be tamed or to be killed. 

“You know, my father always thought you were too soft to rule.” Sylvain whispers, dropping his head, hair falling over his eyes. “He claimed your compassion would keep you from making hard decisions, but we... I always thought that it was what made you strong.” He shifts his weight, plants both feet on the ground, and sure enough beneath where his foot was Dimitri’s cock is straining against the thin, dirty pants he wore under his armor, damp with precum. The anger coursing hot through Sylvian starts to congeal in the pit of his stomach, and he is made aware of his own need. The chain looped tight in his fist becomes too cold, too heavy. _Of course_ all it took was one little command to get him back in line. It’s always been that way, Sylvain supposes, as his hand falls from Dimitri’s chin, a resentful blue flame dancing around his fingertips. There are angry red spots where they’d been singeing into Dimitri’s skin, and Sylvain hates it, hates the way he can never truly follow through when he tries to step out of line. “Funny, isn’t it?” Sylvain says, tacks a hollow laugh on at the end. “Compassion is what’s keeping me alive right now, but it’s what killed you.” His smile is empty as he steps back. There is nothing for him to gain here. The chain in his hand does not jingle. “Well?” He says, spreading his arms in a bitter, grandiose sweep, surrendering himself. “Take what you want, _your highness._ ” 

Dimitri surges up to kiss him like Sylvain’s mouth is a battlefield. It’s all teeth and tongue, Dimitri licking into him with the goal to overwhelm, to distract while his hands rip apart Sylvain’s thick, woolen shirt as though it were a tearaway, and Sylvain can barely keep up. It’s so far a cry from the sweet, shy encounters that used to plague his dreams, wherein a young Dimitri, bright pink and bashful, would try in vain to muffle the sounds Sylvain would pull from his body. There are no sheets to fist into, no door to lock, only this Dimitri, hungry and overwhelming and powerful and Sylvain, chain inexplicably still in his hand, dizzied and offering himself up to be consumed. 

The whiplash of his fall renders him pliant, malleable as Dimitri’s eager mouth travels down his neck. He tilts his head to let teeth scrape his jugular, to let them tease at breaking the thin skin. Sylvain tilts his ear directly into the devil on his shoulder, who tells him _this is what was always going to happen, this is what you wanted from the start,_ and Sylvain, no matter how much he hates it, he knows it to be true. He knows that he’s always lusted after the too-warm, calloused hands that now bruise his waist, always wanted to be claimed by his liege, to be taken and made into something other than himself. Dimitri bites down hard on the curve of his neck. It _hurts,_ a white-hot pain that bursts through him like he’d taken an arrow to the shoulder, but it makes Sylvain moan on his next breath, makes him keen as one of Dimitri’s large hands slides up his side to roll the soft peaks of his nipples beneath the pads of his fingers. The slow ache left behind mixes with little shocks of pleasure and it’s _delicious_ , addictive, and Sylvain wants more. The chain falls loose as he presses forward to feel Dimitri’s aching hardness against his thigh. Dimitri growls, low and reverberating as he pulls back from Sylvain’s neck and there’s blood on his lips, Sylvain’s blood, a deep and damning red against his pale skin. He wouldn’t mind, Sylvain thinks idly, caught between the pain in his shoulder and the fulfillment of seeing Dimitri’s eye glass over as he presses his palm down, if Dimitri bit too hard, used his crest to rip through that shallow, dry skin, take out the flesh beneath. He wouldn’t mind. 

Sylvain makes a noise he hasn’t heard from himself in years when he tastes his copper on Dimitri’s mouth. Dimitri’s kisses are sharp, biting things that leave the swell of Sylvain’s lips bloodied anyway, all teeth and tongue and dominance. They’re hot and messy and leave them connected by thin lines of saliva. Sylvain can’t get enough. He breaks away in surprise when Dimitri hauls him up by the backs of his thighs, his aching, leaking cock pressed against the hard plane of Dimitri’s abs, the first friction he’s gotten and he _whines_ at it, high in his throat before coming down to kiss Dimitri, legs locked firmly around his back and hands cupping his jaw with an undeserved gentleness. Dimitri lays Sylvain down on the pile of softish things he’d come to use as a poor excuse for a bed without pulling away. Sylvain is pinned beneath him, legs folded up so he can feel Dimitri’s cock pressing against where he’s most sensitive, teasing at the space between his cock and his ass. It makes him feel like something to be used, and he loves it, allows himself to want to be fucked and filled and tossed away. Maybe it’s because somewhere in the back of his addled, hazy mind he still believes Dimitri would never discard him, or maybe it’s the thrill of not knowing, because this Dimitri is propelled by carnal desire as he grinds down, chasing his own pleasure with Sylvain as the medium to get to it. The silent chain pools across Sylvain’s neck when Dimitri moves, shockingly cold and weighty, binding him by the throat. Dimitri’s hair casts a shadow over his face, eye dark and hungry as it drinks in Sylvain below him, gaze scraping over the line of his jaw, the hollow of his collarbones and the angry, bloody bite mark that’s still throbbing. Sylvain knows he must look a mess, eyes half-lidded and blurred with tears just barely this side of unshed, a blush high on his cheekbones and spots of oxidized red marring his bruised lips, the acrid aftertaste of blood still lingering in his mouth and stinging his nose. He’s being picked apart piece by piece. 

“Please,” Sylvain breathes, squirming to rut up against Dimitri, panting and desperate. The relief of Dimitri sliding his cock roughly against his own makes him arch, makes one of those tears leak from the corner of his eye. Dimitri follows the salty track with his tongue before pulling back, and the loss of his weight against Sylvain makes the rest of the tears follow suit, spilling down his red, red cheeks and blurring his vision because _no, you can’t leave again, not now not here_. Dimitri presses his fingers to the soft, swollen curve of Sylvain’s lips; he accepts them with fervor. Three slide into the velveteen warmth of Sylvain’s mouth, and he knows what’s coming, and he knows that spit has never made for a good slide, but it’s what he’s going to get. He wants it, he wants to be hurt and marked and claimed, so he moans around Dimitri’s fingers, holds onto his sturdy forearm with both hands and makes expert, practiced use of his tongue. He welcomes it when Dimitri fucks his mouth until spit mixes with the tears to trickle down his jaw. 

“Good boy.” Dimitri says, and pushes his fingers so far back that Sylvain chokes. It makes him leak just that much harder to know that he’s of use, that he’s doing well, that he’s earned Dimitri’s approval. Rather unceremoniously, and with one hand still plugging up Sylvain’s mouth, Dimitri shucks off Sylvain’s bottoms. A horrible ripping sound echoes through the cathedral (because they’re still alone in this wide, cold room, forever sullied now that Sylvain’s been known under the eyes of the Goddess), and it’s good that Sylvain’s mind is as occupied as his mouth. He’s naked, garments in tatters underneath Dimitri, still clothed, and it makes that devil on his shoulder come back as Dimitri takes his fingers and trails spit all down his body. _Let him claim you,_ it says, and Sylvain obeys it. Dimitri pushes two fingers in, and it _hurts._ He’s being opened up for Dimitri to take what he wants, and Sylvain grits his teeth, turns his head as he groans. He bites out little _ahs_ as Dimitri works him loose, as his body concedes to the aching burn of it, as the acute discomfort dulls and morphs into a low pleasure that spreads from the pit of his stomach to seep into his bones until he’s trembling. He’s hot all over and can feel drops of precum leaking onto himself. His body willingly accepts the third of Dimitri’s long, thick fingers. He fucks them into Sylvain, crooked and spread wide and at a pace which does not allow for Sylvain to do anything except lie there and take it. Sylvain dares to look at Dimitri again, and is rewarded with Dimitri’s fervid stare as he reaches up with the hand that had been bruising Sylvain’s thigh, coming to hold his jaw the way Sylvain had held his, turning him left and right like he was appraising an item to be bought. 

“Pretty,” Dimitri says, absentmindedly, and it shoots through Sylvain, makes the pit of his stomach burn, makes him push back and fist into sheets that aren’t there. _Yes, yes,_ he thinks, hazy and overwhelmed, _let me be pretty for you, take what you want,_ but it comes out as a long, drawn-out moan and forcing his legs impossibly farther apart in a bodily plea that Dimitri answers by replacing his fingers with the fat head of his cock. 

Dimitri’s hand moves from Sylvain’s jaw to lay across his throat, just above the heavy press of the chain, and that’s all the warning he gets before Dimitri slams down into him. Sylvain’s breath is punched out as Dimitri sets a breakneck pace, racing forwards with the lone goal of achieving his own climax. Sylvain _loves it._ He throws himself into Dimitri, arches his back and fucks down onto him, as much as he can from where Dimitri’s holding a thigh, bending it up so he can seat himself as deep as possible with each and every roll of his hips. Sylvain is beside himself; his cock is slapping wetly against his stomach, leaking fat globs of precum as he moans. Dimitri is so _big_ inside him, wider and thicker than fingers could’ve ever prepared him for, scraping past the spot that makes him scream, makes him see white, carving into him like he’s trying to leave a mark. His limbs have melted and he’s wailing like a whore, his _fuck, please_ and _more_ and _Dimitri_ all choked-up and staggered by the force of Dimitri’s thrusts. It’s dirty, it’s disgusting. Sylvain has never felt more alive. He brings his hands from where they’d been scrabbling by his sides to hold again to Dimitri’s arm, and the fist around his throat tightens. 

Sylvain’s lungs burn. They scream for oxygen as he sees dark spots mar the perfect picture above him, and he can’t breathe, not really. He can hear his pulse pounding in his head around where Dimitri’s stringent praises echo like a prayer. Dimitri takes his hand off to grip both of Sylvain’s thighs, forcing him to stretch further to drive somehow deeper, and Sylvain gasps. The rush of air is euphoric. He inhales too hard, coughs, sputters, cries as he spends in a rush, painting his stomach an unholy white, and Dimitri just grunts and keeps going. He continues laying into him as he goes soft and Sylvain _screams,_ he cries because it hurts, there’s a thousand needles stabbing into him with each thrust but the fire in his belly is still stubbornly there, still sending flashes of searing pleasure-pain that make him yet writhe and squirm. Above him, Dimitri is lost in his body, eye closed and slack-jawed, groaning and heedless to Sylvain’s terrible moans. He lays into him once, twice, three more times before burying himself deep and staining Sylvain’s insides with his cum. 

They lie there, becoming sticky and gross with Dimitri collapsed atop Sylvain as he softens. Sylvain stares up at the cathedral ceiling. He does not think about how he knows this evening will have consequences. He does not think about how all his clothes are tarnished, nor about how he will have to disinfect the perfect line of teeth embedded in the juncture of his neck. He does not think about how Felix and Ingrid will have known exactly where he went and the fact that they did not come looking. He does not listen to that damned devil on his shoulder, who asks him _isn’t this what you wanted, to be taken and made use of?_ He simply stares up, and a crumbling picture of the Goddess leading her people to a field of golden grain stares back. Above him, a man sighs a sigh of post-coital content that Sylvain does not feel.

Dimitri moves. He pushes up on his hands, peels himself off and slides out with a horrid _squelch_. Sylvain immediately becomes cold. He’s naked and soiled, Dimitri’s cum leaking from him, his own spend drying over his stomach, tear tracks and lines of spit crusting his face. Familiarly, he’s shivering, alone, and full of oncoming aches. He does not think. A large, warm weight drapes over him. 

“Stay.” Dimitri says, and Sylvain realizes that he’s peering up at Dimitri from underneath the thick fur of his cape. Dimitri is standing there, holding a damp scrap of fabric that drips idly onto the smooth stone floor with a deafening _plink-plink-plink._ He’s looking intently at Sylvain, halfway lucid and expectant. Sylvain doesn’t quite know what to do. He’s pinned beneath the warmth of the heavy blue cloak, naked and still at Dimitri’s mercy, still slowly leaking down his thighs. He needs a bath, a bed, probably some salve. He needs to curl into himself, lick his wounds. He doesn’t fool himself into thinking that he needs to unpack all of what happened, because he already knows he won’t. And yet, Dimitri awaits an answer. He’s the spectre of a young, blonde boy, pushing down his nerves as he waits for Sylvain to either let him past the doorframe or turn him out. Sylvain couldn’t turn him out then and, well. He nods. _How much has changed, really?_ He curls into the surprisingly soft, piercing blue to place himself again in Dimitri’s hands. 

Dimitri sets about cleaning Sylvain up. The cloth scrap is woolen and scratchy. It scrapes rough across his cheeks, his chin where Dimitri wipes away the detritus there. He flips up the bottom end of the deep blue fabric, wipes up his stomach. There’s a moment of pause when he gets to Sylvain’s ravaged, abused ass, and he goes about cleaning him up with a surprisingly careful touch, almost-gently splaying Sylvain’s legs again with his free hand to allow better access. 

It’s a slow process. Dimitri has never been adept with his hands outside of weaponry, and even then he’d break bows and training lances by so much as looking at them sideways. They’re large, rough and scarred where they press against him, the kind of reassuring weight he’s always longed for. Sylvain finds himself almost content as he’s scraped clean, hands curled into the thick fur at the cape’s collar. He feels a drip onto his cheeks, where they’re already damp from the cloth. Delicately, like whatever is there might run away, he lifts a finger to wipe at it. A single, crystalline tear spreads across the skin. He feels another, then another, and he’s crying. He does not sniffle, doesn’t call any attention to himself from where he’s pressed himself into the fur for fear that Dimitri might do something, anything. He simply lets them travel down his face, carve a line down his neck to where they’ll settle and dry as Dimitri folds his legs back down, covers them again with the end of the cloak before disappearing with the cloth. In the background, Sylvain’s shoulder throbs. 

Dimitri comes back looking, surprisingly, a little bit tidier than when he’d left. His hair is damp, and he’d abandoned his grime-grayed shirt for a doublet of his own, the collar of it torn to allow space for his chain. 

“Dimitri,” Sylvain calls, soft and hesitant and just barely loud enough to be heard. Tentatively, he sticks a hand out to reach for him, and somewhat unexpectedly, Dimitri comes over to him, plucking what used to be a tapestry from the floor on his way. He kneels at Sylvain’s side, and does not say anything. Sylvain reaches for the collar, slowly, so that Dimitri does not bristle and think he is ill-intended, sitting up a bit when he does. Dimitri’s gaze travels up his arm to fix itself on the congealed blood at the curve of his neck. Some of it is starting to flake off. Sylvain’s fingertips brush the charred outside of his collar. Softly, almost reverently, they smooth over the remains of the runes, heinous swirls that had been scraped off and interlocking angles melted halfway through. In the very front, where Sylvain should be able to see his clavicle, is the crest of Blaiddyd with all its starburst spikes going the wrong way. It’s been cleaved in two. Sylvain presses his palm to it, feels it fizzle with hanging-on power that must still be needling at Dimitri, still causing him pain. He’s never been much good with smithing spells, but he has learned one or two that have gotten him out of sticky situations before. He grips the collar, feels the magic flow through his fingertips. It clashes with the remnants of the runes, but they’re tired, angry and maimed, easy enough to bypass and do away with after five years of threadbare hangings-on. The split-seam at the back opens up, and the steel clatters to the floor between them. Sylvain sinks back underneath the cape. He’s tired. 

Dimitri, slowly, brings a mangled hand to his throat. There’s going to be scarring, no doubt, from years of friction that couldn’t be avoided that has left a red ring around the base of his neck. The skin there is paler than the rest of him, ghostly white. He winces when he touches it. 

“No need to thank me,” Sylvain says, cheeky and exhausted. Dimitri does not thank him, because he no longer knows how, but instead leans down to kiss Sylvain. It’s a flighty thing, nervous and tender, the way he’d kissed Sylvain a lifetime ago, when they were both different people, young and drunk from the celebration wine and so, so blind to the wolves that hid among them. Sylvain kisses him back, and ignores the warmth blooming in his stomach, because those boys are dead. 

Perhaps, he thinks when Dimitri pulls back, settles down next to him and covers them both with the tapestry, it wouldn’t be too bad to pull himself back from the dead.

**Author's Note:**

> tysm for reading! this was my first real try at angst, and i'm quite happy with the end result. thank you so much to pumpkin [[ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinningpumpkin/pseuds/sinningpumpkin), [twitter](https://twitter.com/sinningpumpkin)], sharee [[twitter](https://twitter.com/shareey0%22)], El [[ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elbell3618/pseuds/elbell3618), [twitter](https://twitter.com/el__ubert)] and bun [[ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ichigobun/pseuds/ichigobun), [twitter](https://twitter.com/softmatchabun)] and everyone else from the discord for gassing me up as well as flo [[ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thevibeisdead), [twitter](https://twitter.com/thisvibeisdead)] who has so kindly put up with my bs always. :') im homiesexual for all of u. they are all super great and u should check them out! 
> 
> i can be found on [twitter](https://twitter.com/mysterymistakes), [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.qa/mysterymistakes), and every once in a while on [tumblr](https://mysterymistakes.tumblr.com).


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